From 7 Action Types To Pathfinder 2's New 3 Action Economy

The second attack is at minus five.
The 3 action economy cleans things up but may cause some other problems, like players constantly asking if something is an action or not. Think I'd have to give it a whirl before deciding if it's a worthwhile change.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oy... I would hope that they learned from that mistake :O

Having looked into it more, this apparently wasn't the only time they had done this? I guess it was just more prominent/discussed than previous times. However, given that they used to openly state that the only people claiming a power gap existed between casters and materials were "people with an agenda," but have now openly said they want to "fix" this in 2e, maybe they've changed their tune in other ways too. Time will tell, I suppose.

 

[Ancalagon]

Having looked into it more, this apparently wasn't the only time they had done this? I guess it was just more prominent/discussed than previous times. However, given that they used to openly state that the only people claiming a power gap existed between casters and materials were "people with an agenda," but have now openly said they want to "fix" this in 2e, maybe they've changed their tune in other ways too. Time will tell, I suppose.

That may be because people don't use the word "power" with the same meaning. If you look at the class tier list, it's not based on which class is the most potent (highest DPR or something), but the most *versatile*. The way to equalize the casters is to narrow the focus of their spell list.

 

[Mark Craddock]

And presumably the third, if you can make it is at minus ten. Unless your weapon is... I forget the term they used for it. Swift? Something like that. At any rate, certain weapons only give you a cumulative minus two on consecutive attacks.

Which brings back headaches of a martial resource that is dubious at best. I applaud the notion of a single bonus economy, but bounded accuracy simply removes the illusion of all of these scaling numbers. I hope they address that.

 

[Charlaquin]

Which brings back headaches of a martial resource that is dubious at best. I applaud the notion of a single bonus economy, but bounded accuracy simply removes the illusion of all of these scaling numbers. I hope they address that.

I’m having difficulty parsing your paragraph, but I think I agree with you? I love the idea of Bounded Accuracy, at any rate, and I hope PF2’s bonus treadmill isn’t too egregious.

 

[Ancalagon]

Which brings back headaches of a martial resource that is dubious at best. I applaud the notion of a single bonus economy, but bounded accuracy simply removes the illusion of all of these scaling numbers. I hope they address that.

I'm not 100% sure I follow your post. Are you implying that pf2 will use bounded accuracy, or merely that bounded accuracy was illuminating?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That may be because people don't use the word "power" with the same meaning. If you look at the class tier list, it's not based on which class is the most potent (highest DPR or something), but the most *versatile*. The way to equalize the casters is to narrow the focus of their spell list.

Aha, I have found the original post. It's from their creative director.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=599?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here#29949:
(poster asking in AMA thread): 5) what do you think abut the martial/caster disparity at high levels?
James Jacobs: 5) I think it's a myth propagated by people with agendas.

So it isn't even phrased in terms of power. It's literally just "disparity." Admittedly, this is the creative director, not someone typically in charge of mechanics design...but yeah, it's pretty bad. About six months later, Jason Bulmahn basically said, "look, we know the core's busted, but we chose to maintain full backward compatibility. We can't make content that isn't using the same balance metric as the core, because that would become a must-have book, which we're not okay with. So unless we rip the game apart and start again, this can't be fixed, we'll just keep making stuff that is the same disparity."

So maybe it's just fairer to say that Paizo's team has always been of divided loyalties. SKR openly recanted his...less-than-friendly philosophy towards noncasters after leaving the company, Bulmahn is either under-estimating it or aware of it but believes they can't change it in PF, and Jacobs thinks the disparity is BS spouted by people who just want to be overpowered. PF2e gives the opportunity to actually address the problem. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. I guess I'm afraid they'll make a token effort that reduces it from "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" to merely "Telekinesis Man and Errol Flynn." The former can still bend the laws of reality, just not totally suborning them, while the latter is pretty good at several things but still fundamentally constrained. The difference between "millionaire heiress with best lawyer on the planet vs. destitute single mother with a drunk public defender" and "well-to-do dentist with a highly competent lawyer vs. skirting-the-poverty-line family with an overworked public defender." Yes, the top has dropped substantially and the bottom has risen meaningfully...but do you really think the former is now actually comparable to the latter?

 

[Ancalagon]

Aha, I have found the original post. It's from their creative director.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=599?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here#29949:
(poster asking in AMA thread): 5) what do you think abut the martial/caster disparity at high levels?
James Jacobs: 5) I think it's a myth propagated by people with agendas.

So it isn't even phrased in terms of power. It's literally just "disparity." Admittedly, this is the creative director, not someone typically in charge of mechanics design...but yeah, it's pretty bad. About six months later, Jason Bulmahn basically said, "look, we know the core's busted, but we chose to maintain full backward compatibility. We can't make content that isn't using the same balance metric as the core, because that would become a must-have book, which we're not okay with. So unless we rip the game apart and start again, this can't be fixed, we'll just keep making stuff that is the same disparity."

So maybe it's just fairer to say that Paizo's team has always been of divided loyalties. SKR openly recanted his...less-than-friendly philosophy towards noncasters after leaving the company, Bulmahn is either under-estimating it or aware of it but believes they can't change it in PF, and Jacobs thinks the disparity is BS spouted by people who just want to be overpowered. PF2e gives the opportunity to actually address the problem. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. I guess I'm afraid they'll make a token effort that reduces it from "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" to merely "Telekinesis Man and Errol Flynn." The former can still bend the laws of reality, just not totally suborning them, while the latter is pretty good at several things but still fundamentally constrained. The difference between "millionaire heiress with best lawyer on the planet vs. destitute single mother with a drunk public defender" and "well-to-do dentist with a highly competent lawyer vs. skirting-the-poverty-line family with an overworked public defender." Yes, the top has dropped substantially and the bottom has risen meaningfully...but do you really think the former is now actually comparable to the latter?

(I wanted to give XP and I clicked laugh, sorry about that!)

It does give me hope that there will be some change, if some of them at least acknowledge the problem. 5e had done pretty well to narrow the differences between class in power level, so it is possible.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

(I wanted to give XP and I clicked laugh, sorry about that!)

It does give me hope that there will be some change, if some of them at least acknowledge the problem. 5e had done pretty well to narrow the differences between class in power level, so it is possible.

No worries. If you want to switch them, you can click the "Frown" button, and then give XP instead. Due to forum limits, you'll have to wait 300 seconds between button presses, so it'll take 5 minutes to actually switch it (if you care enough). I'm not put out, so don't sweat it--just so you know you can change it in the future.

 

[Charlaquin]

Due to forum limits, you'll have to wait 300 seconds between button presses, so it'll take 5 minutes to actually switch it

I’m pretty sure you can just refresh the page to get around the 300 second wait.

 

[barasawa]

The article in question didn't even mention a podcast, so no, I probably haven't.

On the other hand, I have tried to watch a podcast about pathfinder 2 the paizo people did, but it's too long and boring with non-pathfinder stuff to fill air time or something. Those bore me to tears. No podcaster is a tenth as interesting as they think they are. A transcript, or just lay it out in text to begin with is infinitely more useful, especially for information. I don't have to hear about Phredds dogs kidneys, and I can find the section on something by scanning the document or using a keyword search instead of having to sit through the entire video just to find one key section.

Sorry folks, podcasts are a massive downgrade for distributing non-audiovisual information.